Telecom Group OTE May Sue Siemens

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OTE, Greece s largest telecom group, claims Siemens overcharged.

FRANKFURT - OTE, Greece's largest telecom group and
partly owned by Deutsche Telekom, may sue Siemens for damages over
alleged overcharging, German newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeitung reported.

OTE has contacted lawyers in Germany and Greece to examine and
prepare all necessary steps, which include a claim for damages, the
paper said in a preview of an article to be published on Saturday,
quoting OTE.

Siemens was not immediately available for comment.

Earlier this week, former Siemens manager Reinhardt Siekaczek told a
court that he had been asked by superiors to construct a slush-fund
network to disguise payments to foreign telecoms companies after such
bribes became illegal in Germany in 1998.

Such payments may have helped Siemens' telecoms equipment division
-- of which OTE was a major customer -- win contracts against rivals
such as Cisco, Nokia and Ericsson.